The privacy of the shrew
Is it wrong for documentary film makers to film intimate moments in the lives of non-human animals? David Attenborough has used fibroptic cameras to obtain views of the inside of a platypus’ nest, providing never-before-seen images of the b…
Read MoreResponse to Embrace the controversy: let’s offer Project Prevention on the NHS
Dominic is right thataddicts are competent to decide on sponsored sterilisation. I have argued that addicts can be autonomous and can consent to research trials involving drugs of addiction (Foddy, B., Savulescu, J.. (2006). ‘Addiction and …
Read MoreFor Sale: Body Parts?
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has recently published a consultation paper entitled Give and Take? Human Bodies in Medicine and Research: https://consultation.nuffieldbioethics.org/fileLibrary/pdf/Human_bodies_in_medicine_and_research_co…
Read MoreOklahoma pro-life measures: preventing abortions and promoting sadism
Two abortion bills passed by the Oklahoma legislature made the headlines recently. The first of these bills requires a doctor to force a patient seeking for an abortion to first undergo an ultrasound and listen to a detailed description of …
Read MoreEmbrace the controversy: let’s offer Project Prevention on the NHS
A controversial US-based charity that pays drug addicts to undergo sterilisation or long-term contraception has recently opened for business in the UK. Project Prevention pays drug users $300 if they provide a medical certificate of drug de…
Read MoreThe end of conscientious objection?
A relationship counsellor, Gary McFarlane, 48, in Bristol was sacked in 2008 for refusing to provide sex therapy to a gay couple. He took action against his former employer, Relate Avon, arguing that it had failed to accommodate his C…
Read MoreDid Eyjafjallajokull Kill the Precautionary Principle?
In mid-April the airports of most major cities in Europe were closed for the better part of a week as a response to the presence of the volcanic ash cloud that spread over Europe as a consequence of the eruption of the Eyjaf…
Read MoreWhat intelligent alien life can tell us about morality
Stephen Hawking made some headlines when he recently argued that although it’s highly probable that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, it would be a grave mistake to try to actively try to establish contact with other inte…
Read MoreAre We Future Evil Aliens?
By: Julian Savulescu Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge physicist, has recently argued, in a Discovery channel documentary, that alien life forms probably exist somewhere in the Universe, but we should avoid contact with them. (http://news.bbc.…
Read MoreMorality: what’s disgust got to do with it?
Kathleen Taylor has got an interesting recent piece in the Guardian about the importance of the emotion of disgust for our moral lives. “If you had a dog”, she asks, “and it died a natural death, how would you feel about roasting and eating…
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